My husband and I are in the midst of a moral dilemma. We recently stopped by Home Depot (hereafter referred to as “The Borg”) to buy some odds and ends. One of these was a $30 multimeter. When we got home, he realized that although we walked out of Borg with the item, we never actually paid for it.
My first impulse was to go back with the item and the receipt and offer to pay, but he brought up a problem - what if a stock shortage of one multimeter is a write-off, but revealing that the schlub who checked us out missed an item gets him fired? And should that make a difference?
What do you guys think? I’m open to having my mind changed, though the “take all you can from the Big Soulless Corporation” argument doesn’t hold a lot of water with me.
I think it’s unlikely missing one item would get him fired, unless it’s a repeat problem.
Probably the moral thing to do would be to go back and pay, but I would probably be too lazy to go back to the store right away. Maybe the next time you swing by you can go make amends. Perhaps by then they won’t even know who made the error.
You don’t have to tell them anything. Just walk in with it and pay for it. They don’t like people walking out without paying for stuff but they don’t have a problem with people walking in with stuff. If anyone sees you they’ll assume that you’re going to the returns or customer service desk, but just go to the checkout and pay. Nobody will know that you walked out with it unless you tell them and there’s no reason to do so.
I’d most definitely pay for the item, but probably not till the next time I was in the area. I add the caveat only because we live in the boonies and the time and gas spent on returning would be a pain. The nearest Home Depot is 25 miles away, and Lowe’s is about 17 miles away.
A few years back, we bought a bunch of cellulose insulation at Lowe’s and rented the blower to fill the attic. We found that not only did we buy too much, but we’d taken home more bales of the insulation than we’d paid for. Apparently, with the two of us and an employee loading and counting, we goofed. So when we returned the blower and the bales we didn’t need, we also told them we’d gotten 7 bales too many. No one got in trouble as far as I know - certainly the woman at the return desk didn’t seem overly concerned.
They’ll know who missed it if the OP takes the receipt in. That has identifying info about the cashier. As olives said, the responsible party would likely just be informed unless it was an ongoing issue.
Frankly, IMPE*, there is an accepted inventory variance that would encompass a percentage of that stock item’s total inventory below a set dollar value.
Example: acceptable variance = 0-2% of that stock keeping unit (SKU) or less than $50 before the variance must be researched and reconciled rather than simply adjusted. That one unit would then fall into the acceptable variance if it met both criteria and be adjusted from inventory. If you return it after it had been adjusted, it would be adjusted back in as a return to stock. No big wooh and you can go to sleep with a clear conscience.
*In My Professional Experience - I work in inventory management.
Why all the subterfuge? Just walk into the store and take it to a cashier and just pay for the damn thing. If you fear getting the cashier in trouble, don’t tell them what happened. If you are questioned by security (does HD even have security?) you can then explain the situation.
Yeah just bring it back and pay for it. I’ve been known to forget a small item more than once. When you’ve got a cart half full with a purse and diaper bag you tend to sometimes miss things. I actually get strange looks for going back with a $1.99 item or less and asking to pay for it.
That’s generally what happens to me. I take my coat off and throw it into the cart when I’m in the store, at least every few months some item gets forgotten under the coat (I usually only buy a few things at a time and keep them up in the baby seat portion of the cart, so this is something that has fallen down). Though one time I did get a larger item before I took off my coat, and then completely forgot about it until I was out at the truck unloading. If I’m not too exhausted/hungry/frozen from being at work all day, I’ll take it right back in, but sometimes it’s “you folks are waiting until my next trip”.
I don’t think they even check to see who originally rang it up, they just scan the item and you pay for it. I don’t even take the original item back, I just get another one, have them scan it and then leave it with them explaining what happened. They laugh at me, and take my money, and that’s that.
And yeah, as others have said, if you didn’t pay for it in the first place, no sense in taking the receipt in.
When we were remodeling our house, my wife found the perfect mirror for the new downstairs bathroom. We bought it at a local Lowe’s and when we got it home discovered it was broken. So we returned it, and they didn’t have another perfect mirror. We took it back for exchange, settled for an also-ran, got it home, and discovered it too was broken. We returned it for a refund, processed the refund, and on the way out saw another perfect mirror. We got it, but evidently there was some confusion with the cashier, because she was aware of our exchange efforts and apparently thought we had simply exchanged the mirror, so she rang up the other stuff we bought (because visiting a hardware store during a home remodel means NEVER leaving empty-handed.) Anyway, bottom line, when we got home we found we had an intact mirror that we hadn’t paid for.
So back we go to Lowe’s with receipt in hand. We talked to a cashier who didn’t understand what we were doing, and finally said, “Wow, you’re really honest, huh? Um… it’s easier if you just take it.”
I insisted on speaking to a manager, because in my view the cashier has no right to give away Lowes’ merchandise just ot make her life easier.
Just today I was checking out with a bunch of groceries, and as the cashier was handing me my receipt, I saw a small can of olives loose in the bottom of my cart that had apparently escaped my notice when I was unloading the cart. By the time I grokked the problem and caught her attention, she had already started the next person’s transaction. So I waited at the end of the checkout lane until she finished, and then she rang up my 95-cent can of olives (I had dug out the buck in the interim).
Once at Target I got a lot of photos developed. Several large prints and some 100ish small prints. They eventually only rang me up for the large prints (some 20 something dollars) and didn’t charge me for the smaller prints (40ish dollars, IIRC).
I eventually looked at the recipt when I got home and thought… huh… That’s not right…
So I called them and asked if someone was short in their drawer and explained the situation. They said that no, the type of machines that I was using were not tied into the system of billing when they made prints and that nobody was short. The lady on the phone just told me to not worry about it.
I wasn’t worried about screwing over Target, I was worried about some kid on his third day of the job messing something up and being blamed for giving away 40 something dollars worth of prints to a friend or something.
How much do you value your reputation? Not having a criminal record? For all you know, they may be tracking you down right now.
Presumably you purchased other things. How about you ring them up and say you’ve been checking your receipt and can’t find mention of the multimeter on your receipt and what would they like you to do? They may well be able to take your credit card over the phone.
In my younger days, I would have kept it and used the saved money to buy beer.
The other day a cashier forgot to ring up $2.00 in batteries. I paid for them the next time I was there.
Just go in, maybe ask for a manager, offer to pay, don’t take the receipt, and don’t indentify the cashier. If by some chance the manager says keep it (doubtful), keep it.
I’m still feeling guilty about something from last week. I realized on the way home that I hadn’t been charged for my mac and cheese 2.05 and was ready to take the tag in and pay the next morning. But then I realized they overcharged me .89 on something else. So I owe them 1.16 plus meals tax because I figured they would take my money for the mac and cheese but how could I prove I didn’t take two of the .89 item? I feel not-so-bad because I bought donations there at the same time so I did give away more than I “stole”.
